


not afraid to fall in deep

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Disaster Lesbians, F/F, Flash Fic, Makeouts, Rom-Com Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 22:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20317132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: "I'm the muscle on this mission," Rey tells Finn. "Also the pilot, but I like 'muscle' even better.""What's that make me?" Connix asks."Very pretty!" Rey replies. "The brains, obviously. But also pretty."Poe and BB-8 decide to play matchmaker for Connix and Rey.They really didn't need to.





	not afraid to fall in deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkyRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyRose/gifts).

> ♥ ♥ ♥
> 
> title from [Canyon](https://soundcloud.com/dizzy-fae/sets/dizzy-fae-free-form-mixtape), by Dizzy Fae ([lyrics](https://genius.com/Dizzy-fae-canyon-lyrics))
> 
> huge thanks to EM for brainstorming and insta-beta

Rey's headed to spar with Finn when she passes Poe and the pretty young woman from Comms & Control. They're siting side by side on a low bench, laughing as they peel ruddy-purple rhizobuttes. BB-8 spots her and comes burbling up to bump against her calf.

"Hi," she says, tapping his head-piece. Then, to be polite, she greets the humans, too.

"Rey-Rey From the Way Out," Poe says. That doesn't make any sense, but Finn says Poe likes to play with words, so Rey smiles. "You know Connix?"

"No."

"Me, that's me," the pretty woman says. She's very slight, her hair done up in pointy little buns just behind her ears. "Connix."

Rey's not sure whether she should apologize. There are so many people to remember around here. She searches for something, anything, to say, but it's agonizing. Connix has smear of rhizobutte peel down one cheek and her eyes are bright and twinkly.

"What are you doing?" Rey finally asks. It comes out blunt, even rude, and she wishes she could take it back.

"We're in the brig!" Poe announces proudly. It sounds like he's saying it's their birthday.

"They _should_ be discharged," BB-8 says. "Technically. According to the rules."

"When did we ever care about rules, buddy?" Poe asks. 

As BB-8 rocks back and forth indecisively, Rey glances at Connix. She's rolling her eyes, but still smiling. When she notices Rey looking at her, she ducks her head and her smile curls shyly.

"I have to go," Rey says.

"Stop by anytime!" Poe shouts after her. "We'll be here for the rest of our natural lives!"

*

Returning to their bunk after a workshift, Finn finds Poe and BB-8 with their heads together, murmuring and conspiring.

"What are you two up to?" he asks warily as he gets ready for the fresher.

BB-8 trills a reply; Finn looks to Poe expectantly for a translation.

"He says 'love', but I say it's more like...'fate'."

"Neither of those sound very good," Finn says.

"They sound awesome," Poe says. "Me and the droid, we're basically geniuses."

BB-8 chirps in agreement.

*

"Mutiny," Connix says the next time they run into each other. This is in the control room, as Rey pokes her head inside, looking for the general. 

"Are you asking me?" Rey asks. "Or announcing one?"

Connix snorts. "No, that's why we're always —" She holds up her small, delicate hands, stained with rhizobutte juice. "Peeling. We tried to mutiny, back on the _Raddus_."

Rey tries to sort through all this information without coming off like an ignorant rube. (She knows she's an ignorant rube and is fine with that. She would just rather that other people not learn the truth for a while yet.

"I'm sure you had a good reason for mutinying," she says. Without quite knowing how she's going to complete the gesture, she reaches out and pats Connix's shoulder. Then, unwilling to drop her hand, she squeezes it. Unlike most of the Resistance, who have taken the general's directive to be _casual but efficient_, Connix still wears her crisp bantha-wool uniform. The fabric is rough, like an old blanket Rey used to have.

"Well, Dameron's very convincing," Connix replies.

"He's very strange."

She laughs. "That, too, yeah."

Rey withdraws her hand and then doesn't know what to do with it, so she folds her arms across her chest. Except that makes her look angry, so she drops them to her sides. "I should go."

"Do you want to have dinner?"

Rey nods. "It's early, but I'm always hungry."

"With me," Connix says. "Do you want to have dinner together? Tonight maybe?"

"Oh," Rey says. She feels her mouth stick in the shape of the sound she just made. Her face is hot, then cold. She nods rapidly, a little maniacally. "Yes. Absolutely."

*

"This is a terrible plan," Finn tells Poe. "You can't mess with people's lives just because you're bored."

They're washing the few starfighters still in operation. Both are stripped to the waist, and it's entirely possible that the hoses are spraying them much more than any fuselage.

BB-8 keeps reminding them of this fact, to no avail.

"I'm not bored!" Poe honestly looks outraged, hands on his hips, chin jutting up.

Finn lifts an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

"Well. A little, sure. We're in a holding pattern and I kind of hate that."

"Really?" Finn asks, as deadpan as he can manage. "You've never let on."

Poe raises his voice. "But what's _more_ important and actually relevant to the topic at hand is, I'm a romantic."

"A bored romantic," Finn says. "Stop interfering in Rey's life, all right?"

"I haven't even done anything!" Poe kneels in front of the landing gear and starts scrubbing with a tiny brush. "Beebs and I are still in the research phase. Gathering intel, acquainting ourselves with the major players, it's all very hush-hush."

"Gossip," Finn says, spritzing Poe with the hose as he passes under the fighter. "Normal people call that 'gossip'."

*

Leia authorizes a two-person mission to barter for tech and evaluate the local resistance cadres on Uplam-3. Because the tech in question is mostly communications equipment, she assigns Connix to the mission.

"I'm the muscle," Rey tells Finn when he comes on shift in the hangar. "Also the pilot, but I like 'muscle' even better."

"What's that make me?" Connix asks from the cargo area.

"Very pretty," Rey replies.

Finn elbows her; frowning, Rey shrugs and elbows him back. Under his breath, Finn says, "_Rey_."

"Well, she is. Also very smart."

Shaking her head and smiling, Connix sits back on her heels. "You're so suave, baby."

Rey beams, showing practically all her teeth.

Finn hugs her goodbye and waves to Connix. "May the Force be, you know. Come back soon."

*

"You're nervous, aren't you?"

They're halfway to Uplam, taking the long, looping hyperspace route just in case any First Order scouts are around. Rey sits crosslegged in the captain's chair, a length of cord hovering before her. She's practicing knotting it without touching it.

Connix is at the navigator panel with three datapads in front of her and an audio bud in one ear. She's been frowning for over an hour now and huffing out frustrated breaths every now and then.

"You shouldn't be," Rey continues. "What do you have to be nervous about?"

"Besides likely betrayal, criminal syndicates, possible painful death and, generally, the First Order establishing galactic dominion?"

"Besides those, yes."

Connix is in civilian clothes — a clingy black jersey dress and sensible kneehigh boots — but her posture, the tension in every joint, suggest she might as well be in dress uniform. She sighs and takes out her ear piece, carefully setting it aside before turning to meet Rey's eyes.

"I'm no good with people," she says.

Rey starts to laugh, then tries to stop when she realizes that wasn't a joke. In the harsh cabin light, Connix's face is pale, her eyes dark.

"I think you're very good with people," Rey says gently. 

"At my station, I know what I'm doing." Connix leans forward, hands clasped. "Even if we're in the middle of chaos, like usual, I know exactly _what_ I can do and what I can't."

"Limits," Rey suggests.

Connix nods. "Like my own skin. But in person? Face to face? There are way too many variables and unknowns. I have no idea how to orient myself, let alone what to do and how to adjust and react and keep going."

"But —"

She smiles a little and looks away, back toward the cargo. "I'm making it sound bad. I probably sound like a freak."

"No, you don't."

"You're really nice, you know that?"

Rey lets the cord drop. "Not always."

Connix inhales sharply. Her brows curve, draw together, as she leans closer yet. She tips up her face and her lips look very soft and round from this angle. Silence, Rey is learning, can be so terrifically _noisy_. This happened a few times when they've had dinner together, and once when they both happened to be in the general's suite at the same time and bumped into each other. Then, as now, they seemed to hang together in a private storm, caught still and tongue-tied.

"Connix —" Rey starts but she doesn't know what she'll say next.

"Kaydel, please." Connix slips forward, hands taking Rey's, and she hesitates for a moment, the space of a heartbeat, then breathes again and settles on Rey's lap. Their arms fold up between them, fingers tangled. "Call me Kaydel?"

"Kaydel." Rey shifts back, tugging Connix with her, until the woman's weight is blanketing her from collarbone to knees. "I really want to kiss you."

"Good," Kaydel says, smiling as their lips brush together. "Otherwise this position might be really awkward."

*

On Uplam-3, Rey is very glad she doesn't have much negotiating to do. She just has to stand behind Kaydel and look menacing. She is kiss-dazed and slightly off-balance with this formless _exhilaration_ that pulses inside her and around her. Having to focus on negotiations would be beyond her just now.

By contrast, Kaydel seems to relish the distraction. She is intent and curt, cutting off the middle-man every time he tries to upsell her. She's like a tightened string on a lute or a bow, Rey thinks, capable of music and violence in equal measure.

She intends to talk all this out with Finn when they return. She's never thought about comparing a woman to anything before, not like this. She's had plenty of sex, but that was, in contrast, like sparring. This feels different. Very good, and very strange, but _different_.

Kaydel arranges for a transfer of one quarter the asking price now, the balance on delivery. Flustered, like he isn't entirely sure he wasn't just scammed, the dealer nods a lot.

"Dinner?" Kaydel asks as she turns. All her tension is gone, replaced by a smile and the curve of her arm through Rey's. "We'll expense it."

"To who?"

She shrugs. "Bespin Holding? Some Calrissian enterprise probably."

On their walk back to the hostel, Kaydel rests her head next to Rey's. Her hair smells like growing things, flowers and leaves. The moon's gas giant glows streaky blue in the southern sky and the shadows before them are cartoonishly long.

Rey hears the click of blaster safety, a whisper, the scrape of boots, and _whirls_. She keeps Kaydel behind her as she shakes out her lightsaber. "Who's there?"

Three vague shapes around the last intersection they crossed, and a fourth just across the canal.

"Go," Rey tells Kaydel and points toward the hostel.

"Hell, no," Kaydel says. She drops behind an ornamental planter and checks her blaster sight for the fourth across the canal. "You can have those three. I'm fine here."

Nodding, Rey sprints back the way they came, keeping to edges of the buildings and occasionally running up the planters to vary her height.

"Resistance scum," the largest of the three says and hefts a weapon that looks like a chainsaw drawn by a child. "The Most Holy Knights of Ren shall feast on your —"

Her saber cuts through the weapon, one half dropping on his foot and driving him back, stumbling, against one comrade. The third, barely taller than Rey herself, swathed in the sort of fabric Kylo Ren favors, tosses a series of daggers at her. They make a _fwip-fwip_ sound spinning through the air, but they also miss her by over a meter. Rey kicks him in the chest, then drives her elbow into his throat until he drops.

One foot on his heaving chest to keep him still, she sweeps the saber toward the other two.

"You want my blood?"

"We seek vengeance," they say as one, which is actually the scariest part. Their eyes are open, but unblinking and somehow empty.

"You poor bastards," Rey says. She doesn't sheathe the saber, but she switches it to her other hand so she can snap her fingers before their faces. They don't flinch.

The Force is frantic around them, crackling with static and muffled pleas for help. She exhales slowly and searches for them, their real selves, in the heart of the Force. The magic on them is sloppy and cruel, the spiritual equivalent of yoking a bantha with barbed wire, but also easy enough to undo.

They crumple to the ground, eyes closing, whimpers escaping their mouths.

*

"You're kind of a hero, huh?" Kaydel asks. They have cleaned up the fight, turned the unfortunate knights over to local authorities, eaten at a splendid buffet, and now they're undressing for the night.

"You shot a guy in his shoulder, disarming and immobilizing him without killing anyone," Rey points out.

Kaydel's cheeks are pink, her hair down, and she's damp and warm from the fresher. She lies on her side, round breasts slipping a little flat like this, and smiles at Rey.

"Mission accomplished, basically," she says. 

"Not until I get naked, too!" Rey yanks at her breeches and impatiently tugs up her torso-wrap.

Laughing, Kaydel sits up and reaches to help. "Stay _still_, it's just—. Rey. You're making it worse. Stop wiggling!"

Rey grunts softly and plants her knee on the edge of the bed next to Kaydel. "Forget it. Kissing you now."

"_Finally_," Kaydel says, wrapping her arms around Rey's neck and pulling her in.

*

Poe has it all figured out. Some of the details are courtesy of BB-8, and he'll give credit where it's due (if anyone asks), but for the most part, this is his plan and it's a genius one.

BB-8 will experience a dire Force event, right in front of Connix's work station. Only Rey has the training, knowledge, and sensitivity to come to the rescue.

"And then Connix will be like, 'whoa, Rey, you're a Jedi _and_ a babe' and Rey will be all blushy but also gallant, and —"

"First of all," Finn puts in. "Why are you making Connix sound like a vulptix in heat?"

Poe shrugs. "She has a high voice."

"Anyway, more important question: how does a droid experience a Force event?"

BB-8 practically growls and Poe anxiously strokes his side. "Droids know the Force, don't let anyone tell you different."

"Got it," Finn says. "So when is the big day?"

"Next shift!" Poe bounces a little on the bunk. "Wait, why are you laughing at me?"

"I just think you ought to wait, that's all."

"For what? Love waits for no one, Finn!"

"For them to get back," Finn says, and ducks because he knows Poe is about to throw something at him. "You know. From their two-woman mission that just got extended."

*

Kaydel convinces Lando to buy outright one of the factories that produces deep-space relays. The Resistance will get a deep discount, and, if all goes well, a backdoor into the First Order's chatter.

She and Rey celebrate with thirteen kinds of dumplings, authentic Yavin punch, and a weekend in bed.


End file.
